I Dreamed of Stars
by SpookyChick
Summary: MSR, Angst, Scully POV, Oddness. "I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness. Yes... you were the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can just hear you snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not smiling."


TITLE: I Dreamed of Stars  
AUTHOR: SpookyChick xfspookychick@yahoo.com  
RATING: R  
KEYWORDS: MSR, Angst, Scully POV, Oddness  
SPOILERS: Post-ep for TINH  
FEEDBACK: Yes, yes, yes! xfspookychick@yahoo.com  
ARCHIVE: Fine, just let me know.  
  
SUMMARY: I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.  
Yes... you were the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can just hear  
you snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not  
smiling.  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks many times over to JET for beta on my  
last story, and for writing "An Influence of Stars," which is  
unconnected with this piece but worth rereading in light of  
Scully's comments in This Is Not Happening. This story is for  
Leyla. Thanks as always to Jo, Tina, Amanda, Peggy, Michele, and  
Megan.  
  
DISCLAIMER: A couple passages are transcribed directly from TINH  
and Closure, although I have fiddled with them a little. You  
will probably recognize them. That writing isn't mine, and of  
course, none of the characters are mine.  
  
*  
  
I Dreamed of Stars  
By SpookyChick  
  
*  
  
I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.  
  
In the center of a blackened room, there you were. Yes... you  
are the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can practically hear you  
snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not  
smiling. You did not cock your head at me in any crude,  
suggestive joke. You did not swagger toward me to propose some  
new, wild theory. You could not even stand.   
  
You lay pinned in the glare of a spotlight. Its focused glow  
underscored the vulnerability of pale, naked flesh against inky  
darkness.   
  
The chair upon which you were racked seemed completely alien.  
Strapped to this elaborate pedestal of torture, your repose  
spoke volumes of pain. You screamed at me in the language of  
your body, pleaded for me to free you. But this was your  
crowning glory, and some cruel, cosmic Jester appointed me  
merely a witness to the court. I could only watch as restraints  
held you firmly in place, as hidden captors tormented you, as  
lines of hooks and wires tore the silence from your lips.  
  
Unable to bear the expression on your face, my eyes slid across  
your skin. I took in the tension in your chest, your arms --  
finally alighting on your hands. You have such big, strong  
hands, Mulder. Some evenings when you held me, there seemed room  
left in your embrace to cradle a galaxy or two. I found my home  
in your arms, as you did in mine.  
  
Not this night. This night, you were just a speck of ghostly  
white in a sea of ebony. The tendons in your wrists were pulled  
taut as you clenched fists, shaking ever so slightly against the  
rough bindings that clutched you to that grisly throne. As I  
watched, invisible and impotent, my prince uncurled the fingers  
of one trembling hand. You stretched toward me, Mulder, reaching  
across space, time, and consciousness...  
  
You dreamed of me.  
  
*  
  
I dreamed of waking.  
  
Sudden and harsh, cool air swept across me as I sat up in bed  
and dropped the blankets. Dressing hastily, thoughtlessly, I  
tugged a coat over my sleepy form and grabbed my keys by the  
door. Then I hurried across the motel parking lot to Skinner's  
room. I sought comfort. I willed him to reassure me that it was  
but a dream. Those words did not come; and as he accompanied me  
out into the evening, I might as well have been a billion years  
away.  
  
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I spoke aloud to  
Skinner.   
  
Of my memories, I spoke only to the stars. They seemed so  
vulnerable to me, the wide, dark sky ready to extinguish their  
tiny points of light at any moment.  
  
Remember, Mulder? Remember  
When we found that the body of that little girl,  
Amber Lynn LaPierre,  
When you lost your mother and found Samantha  
in a single breath,  
When you whispered to me,  
  
"These fates seem too cruel, Scully, even for God to allow. Or  
are the tragic young born again when the world's not looking? I  
want to believe so badly; in a truth beyond our own, hidden and  
obscured from all but the most sensitive eyes... in the endless  
procession of souls... in what cannot and will not be destroyed.  
I want to believe we are unaware of God's eternal recompense and  
sadness. That we cannot see His truth. That that which is born  
still lives and cannot be buried in the cold earth, but only  
waits to be born again at God's behest... where in ancient  
starlight we lay in repose."  
  
Some time later, as we bound up our wounds and prepared to chase  
forever more lights in the sky, you whispered to me again.  
  
"You know, I never stop to think... that the light is billions  
of years old by the time we see it. From the beginning of time  
right past us into the future. Nothing is as ancient in the  
universe. But, maybe they are souls, Scully. Traveling through  
time as starlight, looking for homes."  
  
In my dream, Skinner looked down at me with unreadable emotion  
in his eyes, drew me back to earth with a glance. So I cut short  
my musing and articulated my thoughts.  
  
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I reminded Skinner.  
  
"How it's billions of years old. How stars that are still long  
dead, whose light is still traveling through time... It won't  
die, that light. Maybe that's the only thing that never does.  
Mulder said that's where souls reside."  
  
"Hope he's right," I murmured finally, aloud.  
  
"Hope you're right," I told you through the stars.  
  
*  
  
When I returned, at last, to sleep that night...  
  
I dreamed of stars.  
  
*  
  
But first, again -- again?  
I had to dream the darkness.  
  
This time, Mulder, you were not restrained with cloth or metal  
or implements I could not even recognize. Still, you did not  
move. You lay on the ground, faded blue and gray and cold in a  
dirty blanket. And when your latest captors, the group of agents  
and officers guarding your body, parted for me to see you, you  
did not gaze back at me. You did not answer when I demanded of  
the intruders in our space: "How bad is Mulder hurt? How bad is  
it?" You did not respond when I knelt to touch your scarred,  
slack jaw. You simply lay there.  
  
So I ran through the dark, breaking away from the people  
surrounding me. Bodies tried to hold me, catch me, kill me with  
the news of your death, Mulder. But I ran faster, faster,  
tearing through the darkness as if the speed of light could  
carry me to find someone to heal you in time. To save you.  
  
I ran and ran and ran until a blaze began to spread across the  
sky. Then I pulled up short; I could only watch. Just like in my  
first dream, where you alone were illuminated for that torturous  
fate. Damn it, Mulder, you have been persuading me of the  
starlight for years. Now my eyes are open to it, my pupils  
dilated wide. I believe. So why must I still stand idly by?  
  
In this dream, the choice was not mine to make. So I stood, a  
small black silhouette at the top of a tiny hill, witness to the  
glow that bathed Jeremiah's compound. The brilliance washed over  
the house, lit up the prophet and his abductee patients and took  
them all away from me. They faded into light and I could not  
stop it. I could do nothing. Nothing, Mulder! The frustration  
when I threw open the doors of that empty building nearly burned  
me up inside. You vanished in Oregon; now a hundred souls more  
have gone; yet I remain fumbling blindly in this ocean of dark.  
When is it my time?  
  
I screamed up at the ceiling, willing it to split apart. But the  
sky did not open. The building did not shatter around me. So I  
did the only thing I could think of, and myself shattered  
instead. I screamed again, and denied the death of the stars.  
  
"This... is... not... happening."  
  
*  
  
Agents Doggett and Skinner arrived at the empty house soon after  
me. They scooped me up and balanced me between them as I  
stumbled numbly to the car. I do not recall exactly where they  
took me -- some hotel, I think? -- or how I got there. I only  
remember that I dreamed of stars.  
  
*  
  
Always, though... always, the darkness comes first.  
Why must I dream the darkness to see the stars?  
  
*  
  
I dreamed the past.  
  
I dreamed your bleak, gray years missing Samantha. I dreamed  
losing your father, losing your mother, losing yourself in  
profiles of serial killers and stranger, ever more evil  
phenomena. I dreamed losing my father, my sister, and my  
daughter, too. I even dreamed Agent Doggett's missing son.  
  
Through these nightmares, I slept only fitfully. I clasped and  
kicked at the covers, tangling the once-crisp white sheets  
around my fevered form. The hotel's simple bed had no headboard,  
no footboard -- nothing solid to grasp as I flailed my limbs out  
into the darkened space of the room. I stretched in every  
direction but forward, reaching for pieces of the past that  
remained just beyond my fingertips.  
  
*  
  
I dream this very moment.  
  
Sprinting toward your still form in hope. Stumbling away in  
horror. I live it over and over and over again.  
  
Through the endless black of the past, Mulder, you lit up a  
thousand of my nights. Yet I cannot find you in this most  
pressing time. In the search since your abduction, every glimpse  
of evidence we spy is already ancient. Even tonight, Mulder: By  
the time I found it, your body was a billion years dead to me.  
As I lay small and dark on a spinning sphere of earth, I can  
only wonder -- where are you *now*?  
  
I pull my knees toward my chest and ball my fingers into fists,  
willing myself to hang on as the planet tumbles recklessly  
beneath me. Squinting my eyes tightly shut, wrapping my arms  
firmly around my calves, I adopt a defensive posture against the  
darkness.  
  
*  
  
Finally -- finally -- I will dream our future.  
  
One evening, I will wake from this living nightmare and hurry  
forth for comfort. I will not knock at Skinner's door -- I will  
knock at yours. And when I lead you out under the canopy of sky,  
I will speak to you directly, without resort to stars.   
  
"You once talked with me of starlight," I will remind you.  
  
"You told me that the light of stars are souls. That these souls  
rush past us from the beginning of time on into the future,  
looking for places to rest. Your beautiful mind, Mulder... that  
was the only time you ever wondered aloud about God. You never  
were sure. It might all have made sense sooner if only you had  
taken the last logical step."  
  
"Scully, dear," you will smile down at me with a hint of  
laughter in your eyes, "I rely on *you* for logic."  
  
Belatedly, I will put together the pieces for you and for  
myself.  
  
"You said there are souls in the starlight," I will begin. "You  
said stars are souls searching for homes."  
  
You will nod, quietly watching the comprehension wash over my  
features. Oh, Mulder, so long I have sought you -- found you,  
and lost you, and found you again.  
  
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."  
  
Sleeping yet, my mind conjures the most disturbing, pitch-black  
depths of night. Restless, I throw a desperate fist across  
rumpled bed-sheets.  
  
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."  
  
Lost somewhere in that moment between waking and slumber, I  
uncurl the fingers of one tense, trembling hand. I stretch white  
fingertips into the blind space of the room, my flesh so pale it  
shines against the darkness. I reach forward.  
  
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."  
  
In one more heartbeat, I will unclench both fists, throw my arms  
'round your neck, tug your head down toward mine, and speak to  
you a billion emotions with the sparks of my eyes. But the first  
bit of my revelation must be uttered aloud. I need to hear the  
words as much as you do -- it's like pinching myself to make  
sure I'm not asleep. Do I wake or do I dream?  
  
As I whisper,  
  
"Mulder, you are home."  
  
*  
  
I dream of stars.  
  
I dream of darkness.  
  
I dream of that last heartbeat,  
Of holding you in my arms for a billion years.  
  
And perhaps -- just perhaps -- the stars dream of me.  
  
*  
  
End.  
  
*  
  
Loved it? Hated it? Made no sense at all?  
Feedback, please! xfspookychick@yahoo.com 


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